Georg Hahn and Wolfgang Nocke's sublime Delphine (Germany, 1984)

Well, what would you say to a cover like that?  That the music must be good, it has to be, it cannot be a disappointment with such effort put into its appearance?  Well, if records were like women, it might not be the case, given how uninteresting most beautiful women are in conversation...  but records are not women, thank god, they don't talk to you for hours at the end of the day describing in minute detail each boring thing that happened to them at work and assuming we know every one of their colleagues and how much they hate that one woman at work who is such a lazy bitch and everyone hates her...  no, this is even more interesting on the inside.

A really gorgeous jazzy new age album with keyboards, strings, flutes, and indescribable quantities of good ideas and beauty.  The long composed track on side b called "The Forest" is the stunning highlight, divided into three parts, "Lichtung," "Wind," and "Herbst:"  

This track to me, is heaven.  Dig the herbst these artists put into that composition.  The unabashedly beautiful classical European chamber music tradition shines through the forest like a morning sunrise.  It should have closed out the album, because, with a kind of abrupt static shock to the skin there follows a track called "Samba" which, as is customary in these cases, is utter garbage and irredeemably awful, at least for myself.

I note on reading the gatefold that Nocke is the artist for this (beautiful, inside and outside) work.  Each painting was 'put to music':  thus the cover is Delphine (track A1), the inner is Dschungel (A2), and the rear is called Venedig (A3).  The amazing flute playing is from Klaus Dapper, and Wolfgang Florey plays the cello with such emotion.  Hahn is responsible for all composition, arrangements, and naturally, keyboards (as well as accordion on the track called "Pierrot").